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A new era for crowdfunding

A recent rule change will allow entrepreneurs seeking investors to reach a much broader audience, By JONATHAN MEDVED

Potential investors will soon begin seeing opportunities pop up in their Facebook news feeds and in their email inboxes thanks to a major rule change from the Securities and Exchange Commission. In September, the agency removed the decades-old ban on public solicitation for private investments. This means private investments can now be marketed to the general public, which will allow entrepreneurs to reach a much broader audience than securities law used to allow.

The nascent crowdfunding market, which uses the Internet to pool small investments from many investors, stands to benefit significantly from this rule change. Right now, crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are not subject to securities laws because they allow people to give money to support projects and individual initiatives, not invest in them. In the roughly four years they've been in existence, these two sites have raised close to $1 billion in contributions for thousands of projects.

Mr. Medved is the CEO of OurCrowd, an equity-based crowdfunding platform based in Israel.Read more on An SEC Rule Change Opens a New Era for Crowdfunding. [October 9, 2013, on page A17 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal]...now we are looking for Social Entrepreneurs to build on their nascent successes with crowdfunding!!!!